Over the past couple of years, women’s sports have become more visible and prevalent. In football, the 2023 Women’s World Cup hosted in New Zealand achieved record attendance and viewership. With close to two million people going to its matches, the tournament became the most attended women’s sporting event ever, surpassing FIFA’s target of 1.5 million. The tournament also further highlighted the increasing number of countries implementing equal pay for their women’s teams.

The pursuit of equality in women’s football has become a recurring theme, with frequent declarations from federations, administrators, coaches, and players. To the inattentive observer, achievements such as Banyana Banyana winning the 2022 WAFCON for the first time in their history or Zambia and Morocco making their debut at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup and Nigeria and Zambia’s qualification to Paris 2024, along with the proliferation and accomplishments of African footballers in top leagues, might appear as signs of progress. 

The reality is different. As outlined by Maher Mezahi on the podcast Africa Five-a-side, 29 out of the 54 member associations on the continent did not register their teams for the Paris 2024 women’s football qualifiers. The Women’s African Cup of Nations (WAFCON), originally slated for this year, has been postponed to July 2025. Prior to CAF’s announcement at the end of June, there was a conspicuous lack of communication from the governing body concerning the tournament’s status. Such an oversight would be unthinkable for other flagship tournaments. The delay also means that some teams on the continent will effectively go a whole calendar year without any competitive games. 

One of the main problems plaguing women’s football is that there is only so much cash to spread between men’s and women’s national teams as well as the other development programs and projects. But within these budgets, there is clear discrimination as far as who gets what. 

In the Lesotho Federation’s 2022 financial statement, the senior men’s national team received nearly five times the funding of the senior women’s national team. This contrasts with the previous year, where the women’s team received slightly more funding than the men’s team, albeit by a small margin.

Kenya’s last publicly available report from 2021 reveals that in 2019 the federation spent more than double on the senior men’s national football in comparison to their women counterparts. The disparity could have arguably been justified as the men participated in the 2019 AFCON tournament (where they were eliminated in the group stages). However, even in the preceding year, the federation allocated more funds to the Harambee Stars than to the Harambee Starlets. The funding gap between the men’s and women’s teams in that year nearly equaled the total amount allocated to the women’s team in 2019.

Tanzania’s last accessible budget from 2019 also paints a bleak picture. Between 2017 and 2018, the money spent on the women’s senior national team decreased, while for the men, it increased. It is important to note that during this time, the Tanzanian men’s team did not participate in the 2017 AFCON, nor did they qualify for the 2019 FIFA World Cup.

Bladina Mdebwe, women’s football manager for the Football Association of Malawi (FAM), has been vocal about how financial constraints have limited the opportunities for women to compete globally. 

“The main challenge at the moment we’ve been having is funding for women’s football,” she tells Rich Laverty. “There is little to no funding when it comes to women’s football and we don’t have a sponsor who can assist us with registering for competitions like the African Cup of Nations. All we can do is the COSAFA Championship, that’s the only competition we are registered for with the senior national team.”

In contrast, their male counterparts have been afforded the chance to compete in the COSAFA Cup and participate in qualifiers for the AFCON and FIFA World Cup over the last two years. 

FIFA’s Forward Program was created in 2016 to provide financial backing and other essential resources to support the women’s game globally. Dr. Sahar El-Hawary, a trailblazer in Egyptian women’s football and the first Arab woman on the FIFA Committee, has been crucial in advocating for the advancement of the women’s game on the continent. “I worked in promoting women’s football in CAF. For FIFA, the African continent was the weakest as it was rigid in tradition with no understanding or belief that women could play football—it was the man’s domain,” she tells Africa Is a Country. “It was my role to push hard for rules and regulations in favor of women to empower them.”

However, despite the existence of such initiatives, El-Hawary notes that some federations fail to capitalize on these opportunities due to reluctance to engage in the application process, or when they do apply, they divert the funds intended for women’s football toward the men. 

The common rhetoric used to justify the great disparity in investment is that men’s football has more eyeballs and can garner more revenue for the federation. However, there are a few things wrong with this argument. First, it presumes that men’s football is far superior in terms of competitiveness, which, when speaking about African teams, is not always the case. For example, between the men’s teams from Lesotho, Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi, only Malawi has made it to the round of 16 in the AFCON tournament, while the other three teams have never made it past group stages. They are not that much distinguishable from their women counterparts when it comes to performance in international tournaments to warrant the significant gap in budget allocation. 

Arguments based on competitiveness also ignore that the prevailing conditions are by design—the intentional exclusion and discrimination of women has fortified the status quo. Therefore women’s football is held to an impossible standard where they are expected to accomplish the same viewership and revenue with far fewer resources, time, support, and infrastructure. 

In the case of Egypt, women were not allowed to participate in football until the late 1990s, which effectively means that men’s football has had close to a century-long head start. Dr. El-Hawary is to be credited for helping spearhead the development of the women’s game. She came into the sport through her father, who was a respected referee. After his death, El-Hawary created a women’s team where she scouted players from across the country and subsidized them with her own money. By 1997, she formed the first women’s football league and the first Arab women’s tournament with the participation of six countries. Her work was instrumental in forming the national team that would compete in the inaugural 1998 WAFCON.

El-Hawary’s efforts in women’s football development saw her become the first female member of the Egyptian Football Federation, the president of the first Arab league for women’s football, and a member of FIFA. Her departure from Egyptian football in 2016 has left a massive hole and dampened the progress on the national end. 

Since then, Egypt’s showing on the world stage has been less than stellar. The team failed to qualify for Morocco 2025 and has not qualified for WAFCON since 2016. Unlike their male counterparts, they have never made an appearance at the World Cup.

“There’s a huge gap,”  says Noor Soroor, former professional player and founder of Heels Academy, an academy for girls and women with three locations in Egypt. “Dr. Sahar single-handedly managed everything on her own. She used to speak for us and everyone used to listen, because she knew what she was doing. Since she’s left, there’s been a huge drop. We haven’t been participating in anything, because no one is taking the initiative.”

According to Soroor, how the women’s team performs impacts what happens on the ground. Despite the increased interest by girls to participate in the sport and it becoming more culturally acceptable, when there are no support structures behind the national team, it’s hard for women to see a future in the support.  Talented footballers with potential often quit or seek opportunities elsewhere. 

“For female football players like me, building a professional career requires a lot of hard work. Here in Egypt, girls and women who want to pursue professional football receive very little institutional support. Only a few clubs have women’s teams, and the funding and resources they are given are merely symbolic—not at all comparable to what boys’ and men’s teams receive. We don’t get big checks or millions of dollars or clubs buying and selling players. That’s why every Egyptian female football player’s dream is to play abroad—and why so many of them end up leaving,” writes Rooka Saeed Mousa for Malala Fund. 

Lesotho, like Egypt, is not competitive on the international stage. The project of developing the women’s game in the country has been on FIFA’s radar since the late 2000s. However, in the last 17 years, the national team has not qualified for AFCON, the Olympics, or the World Cup and barely plays any international games.

Their most decorated women’s player on the national side, Boitumelo Rabale, has previously expressed disappointment with the state of the team. “It hurts because there’s hardly ever a time when we are registered to play international matches like the WAFCON or World Cup qualifiers. The only competition we can and have competed in is the COSAFA Cup, so I honestly don’t know what I can achieve with my national team. Maybe I will be one of those great players who retire without ever being at a major tournament,” she told SABC Sport. 

A similar trend is apparent in Malawi, where women’s football has been active since 1998. The nation has produced two world-class stars in sisters Tabitha and Temwa Chawinga. Tabitha, who was previously with PSG, is currently signed with Lyon, while Temwa plays for the Kansas City Current. They have both been top scorers in their respective domestic leagues but rarely get the opportunity to show their brilliance on the international and continental stage. 

These examples highlight that the only way for young African women to grow in football is to play outside their home countries. And the few that have succeeded demonstrate that there is a considerable pool of untapped talent that won’t get the same opportunities to succeed. When it comes to the development of women’s football on the continent, progress is not going to be linear. But progress won’t happen if there’s no concerted effort from the federations. 

Soroor and Dr. El-Hawary both emphasize that none of this can be done if the associations don’t have people within the game with a passion for it. The structures behind them are equally important. Without these elements, African women’s football will either stagnate or regress. Both are optimistic that women’s football can thrive. Their experience working at the grassroots level means that they have seen the cultural shifts, the talent, and the improved quality of the game, which leaves them feeling positive about the trajectory of the sport. 

However, for Dr. El-Hawary, real progress is about “promoting schools and academies with proper structures—with a five-year short plan and a ten-year plan. You have to work on it and abide by it. Federations have to allocate the budget adequately every year. There should be women that are employed as administrators and they have to come from the game—whether ex-players and ex-coaches. And FAs should have press conferences where they show the progress so that the girls feel like they are recognized.”

For too long, “progress”  has meant catching up to men’s football—but in Africa, the women’s game is often miles ahead in talent, quality, and enthusiasm.  It’s time we all started acting like it. A culture of excellence cannot be created with willful neglect. With blatant sexism. With empty statements and commitments. It’s high time for a recalibration. Without it, talented and quality players will be denied their chance to shine and football fans will be robbed with a sense of pride.